ΒΟΡΡΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΝΟΤΟΣ
Η Μάργκαρετ Χέιλ, κόρη ενός αντικομφορμιστή ιερέα, μεγαλώνει στο ειδυλλιακό τοπίο του αγροτικού Νότου στην Αγγλία. Όταν ο πατέρας της εγκαταλείπει την εκκλησία για λόγους συνείδησης, η Μάργκαρετ αναγκάζεται να αφήσει το άνετο σπιτικό της στο Χάμπσαϊρ και να μετακομίσει με την οικογένειά της στον Βορρά. Στην αρχή νιώθει δυσφορία για την ασχήμια που την περιβάλλει στη βιομηχανική πόλη του Μίλτον. Γρήγορα, όμως, συνειδητοποιεί τη φτώχεια και τη δυστυχία των ντόπιων εργατών που δουλεύουν στα κλωστοϋφαντουργεία και αναπτύσσει έντονο κοινωνικό π...
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(H/B) NORTH AND SOUTH
Forced to move from the rural tranquillity of southern England to the turbulent northern mill town of Milton, Margaret Hale takes an instant dislike to the dirt and noise that seems to characterize her new home and its inhabitants - even the handsome and charismatic cotton mill owner, John Thornton. But as she begins to settle in, and to understand the nature of the surrounding poverty and injustice, events conspire to throw her and Thornton together. Amidst the chaos of industrial unrest, they must learn to overcome the prejudices of clas...
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ΡΟΥΘ
Ένα μεγάλο έργο μιας μεγάλης συγγραφέως... Μια ιστορία που συγκίνησε όσο λίγες, και είναι και σήμερα επίκαιρη όσο ποτέ, ιδίως αν αναλογιστεί κανείς τον κόσμο σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο. Η νεαρή Ρουθ, ορφανή και αβοήθητη, καθίσταται θύμα αποπλάνησης από έναν ευγενή. Εγκαταλελειμμένη με ένα παιδί από τον παράνομο εκείνο δεσμό, προσπαθεί να βρει το δρόμο της και να ζήσει μέσα στα πολύ αυστηρά ήθη της βικτοριανής κοινωνίας. Θα αποστρέψουν όλοι το πρόσωπό τους; Όλοι θα την καταδικάσουν; Το μυθιστόρημα είναι μια εκπληκτική περιπέτεια και συνάμα μια πε...
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(P/B) THE OLD NURSE'S STORY
'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n...' In this selection from Milton's great epic poem Paradise Lost, the fallen angels plot their revenge on Heaven after being banished to Hell - and Satan embarks on a perilous journey to discover and corrupt the new world God has created... Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Vict...
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(P/B) WIVES AND DAUGHTERS
Gaskell's last novel, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. At its core are family relationships - father, daughter and step-mother, father and sons, father and step-daughter - all tested and strained by the romantic entanglements that ensue. Despite its underlying seriousness, the prevailing tone is one of comedy. Gaskell vividly portrays the world of the late 1820s and the forces of change within it, and her vision is always humane and progressive. The story is full...
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(P/B) WIVES AND DAUGHTERS
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel, is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Molly Gibson is the daughter of the doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford. Her widowed father marries a second time to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks, but until the arrival of Cynthia, her dazzling step-sister, Molly finds her situation hard to accept. Intertwined with the story of the Gibsons is that of Squire Hamley and his two sons; as Molly grows up and falls in love she learns to judge people for what they are,...
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(P/B) NORTH AND SOUTH
Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author's first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine's movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell's skilful narrative uses an unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven together in a newly industrial society. This is a tale of hard-won triumphs - of rational thought over prejudice and of humane care over blind deference to the market. Readers in the twenty-first cen...
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(P/B) GOTHIC TALES
Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. Disappearances , inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; Lois the Witch , a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in The Old Nurse s Story a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as The Poor Clare , where an evil doppelgdnger is formed by a woman s bitter curse, or mischievous...
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ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥΓΕΝΝΙΑΤΙΚΗ ΘΥΕΛΛΑ ΚΑΙ ΛΙΑΚΑΔΑ
Κορυφαία σύντομη ιστορία της μεγάλης συγγραφέως, όπου αναδεικνύεται η μαεστρία της στην αφήγηση. Σε μια μικρή κωμόπολη εκδίδονται δύο εφημερίδες, ο συντηρητικός "Iπτάμενος Tαχυδρόμος" και ο φιλελεύθερος "Eρευνητής". Παρά την ασίγαστη χολή μεταξύ των εντύπων τους, οι αντίπαλοι αρχιστοιχειοθέτες κατοικούν στο ίδιο σπίτι. Οι γυναίκες τους συγκρούονται σε όλα τα επίπεδα και πρωταγωνιστούν στο πέρασμα της αντιπαράθεσης από το πολιτικό στο προσωπικό. Η πλοκή φέρνει τα πάνω-κάτω, καθώς μέσα σε μια άγρια χειμωνιάτικη θύελλα η ανάγκη ενώνει και πάλ...
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(P/B) NORTH AND SOUTH
"How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?" Margaret Hale is wrenched from her beloved rural idyll of Helstone and moved with her family to the industrial northern town of Milton, with its grime and all the ugliness of urban life. But from her initial distaste, Margaret develops a new sense of social justice, and a complicated relationship with the mill-owner John Thornton. First published in 1855, North and South has one of the most full, original heroines in Victorian lit...
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NORTH AND SOUTH (+AUDIO CD) STEP FOUR B2.1
Margaret Hale finds the industrial north of England very different to the rural, conservative and gentle south, when she moves there with her parents. She considers the north inferior because of its new wealth and eagerness to make money. When she meets John Thornton, who is a self-made and ambitious young man, there is an attraction, but his ideas are very different to Margaret's. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) CRANFORD AND OTHER STORIES
The sheer variety and accomplishment of Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter fiction is amazing. This new volume contains six of her finest stories that have been selected specifically to demonstrate this, and to trace the development of her art. As diverse in setting as in subject matter, these tales move from the gentle comedy of life in a small English country town in Dr Harrison's Confessions, to atmospheric horror in far north-west Wales with The Doom of the Griffiths. The story of Cousin Phillis, her masterly tale of love and loss, is a subt...
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(P/B) MARY BARTON
"O Jem, her father won't listen to me, and it's you must save Mary! You're like a brother to her" Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner's son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Mary's dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous activis...
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(P/B) RUTH
Ruth Hilton is an orphaned young seamstress who catches the eye of a gentleman, Henry Bellingham, who is captivated by her simplicity and beauty. When she loses her job and home, he offers her comfort and shelter, only to cruelly desert her soon after. Nearly dead with grief and shame, Ruth is offered the chance of a new life among people who give her love and respect, even though they are at first unaware of her secret - an illegitimate child. When Henry enters her life again, however, Ruth must make the impossible choice between social a...
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(P/B) NORTH AND SOUTH
Having grown up in London and rural southern England, Margaret Hale moves with her father to the northern industrial city of Milton. She is shocked by the poverty she encounters and dismayed by the unsympathetic attitude of the textile-mill owner John Thornton, whose factory workers are engaged in an acrimonious strike. Against this backdrop of social unrest, the relationship between the two is tumultuous, and it takes further upheaval and tragedy for them to see each other in a different light. First serialized in Dickens's magazine House...
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(P/B) CRANFORD
A vivid and affectionate portrait of a provincial town in early Victorian England, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford describes a community dominated by its independent and refined women. Undaunted by poverty, but dismayed by changes brought by the railway and by new commercial practices, the ladies of Cranford respond to disruption with both suspicion and courage. Miss Matty and her sister Deborah uphold standards and survive personal tragedy and everyday dramas; innovation may bring loss, but it also brings growth, and welcome freedoms. Cranfo...
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(P/B) SYLVIA'S LOVERS
Elizabeth Gaskell's only historical novel, "Sylvia's Lovers", is set in 1790 in the seaside town of Monkshaven (Whitby) where press-gangs wreak havoc by seizing young men for service in the Napoleonic wars. One of their victims is whaling harpooner, Charley Kinraid, whose charm and vivacity have captured the heart of Sylvia Robson. But Sylvia's devoted cousin, Philip Hepburn, hopes to marry her himself and, in order to win her, deliberately withholds crucial information with devastating consequences. With its themes of suffering, unrequite...
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(P/B) THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Bronte was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte Bronte's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her marriage at thirty-eight and death less than a year later. The resulting work - the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist - explored ...
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(P/B) CRANFORD
From the author of North and South and Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford is a standalone publication of Elizabeth Gaskell's best-known work, with a critical introduction by Patricia Ingham in Penguin Classics. Cranford depicts the lives and preoccupations of the inhabitants of a small village - their petty snobberies, appetite for gossip, and loyal support for each other in times of need This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns a...
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(P/B) MARY BARTON
Mary Barton first appeared in 1848, and has since become one of the best known novels on the 'condition of England,' part of a nineteenth-century British trend to understand the enormous cultural, economic and social changes wrought by industrialization. Gaskell's work had great importance to the labour and reform movements, and it influenced writers such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Charlotte Bront?. The plot of Mary Barton concerns the poverty and desperation of England's industrial workers. Fundamentally, however, it revolves ...
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